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Patents Bill with Software Exclusion Passes Into Law

Today in the NZ Parliament, the Patents Bill (the first update to the current patent legislation, unchanged since 1952!) underwent its Committee Stage (initiated with a rather stirring speech by Clare Curran lauding the NZ software industry as the "forgers and creators of our new economy") and its Third Reading.

In stark contrast to the innovation choking software patent melee in the US, New Zealand has now legislated that software cannot be patented. Our society has always recognised the destructive intractability of granting monopolies on mathematical formulae and ideas, which is, in effect, what software patents are, and we are gratified that our government has backed our domestic IT industry over international pressures, primarily from self-interested domestic patent lawyers and influential US-based multinational corporations.